by Jarrett Hoffman
It’s hard to say what’s most interesting about the new opera Angel’s Bone, which will receive its second-ever performance next week in Oberlin. It could be the music of Oberlin Conservatory alum Du Yun (left), which incorporates punk rock, cabaret, and electronics. It could be the libretto by Royce Vavrek, which examines sexual slavery and trafficking through a prism of magical realism. Or maybe it’s the challenge for performers of portraying the perpetrators of those crimes, making them human.
On January 31 at 7:30 pm at The Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse, Oberlin Conservatory presents a Winter Term Opera production of Angel’s Bone, directed by Christopher Mirto and conducted by Matthew Chamberlain. After opening night, which is part of Cleveland Opera Theater’s {NOW} Festival, performances continue on February 2, 4, 6, and 7 — see our Concert Listings for exact times. Admission is free, but tickets are required and seating is limited. Talk-back sessions including Oberlin faculty, students from the production, and community support groups will follow each performance.
Opera in a dance club? Why not? Opera can be intimidating and ridiculous, with its gilded houses, extravagant length, fantastic plots, and the bewildering phantasmagoria that generally appears onstage. There’s a reason why it’s parodied so frequently. So it was refreshing to see digestible, one-act operas about everyday people presented by Oberlin Opera Theater in the basement Dionysus Disco, better known to the sweaty college revelers who are its normal customers as the ‘Sco.